Sunday, February 13, 2011

Napoleon's Battles (part 2)

My last post showed some of the scenes from my first Napoleon’s Battles game in a long time.I think my last game was Lutzen and it would have been early turn of the century.It was great to be able to play again. Thank you Richard and thank you Myron for pointing out to me that Richard was looking for an opponent here in Perth.Amazing timing.

The game was so interesting that it was left set up and we completed it on a Tuesday evening.All up would have been eight hours or more of play and I think around twelve game turns.Lots of attacks and counterattacks.Some surprise successes and many unexpected rebuffs (with one notable much reduced French brigade at least twice repulsing massive Austrian attacks).

I started using version one of the rules and on the second session had swapped to version two.Richard was using version three.Even though we had to consult the rules a number of times (more to be sure of a particular process) it all worked quiet smoothly.We made a few mistakes in rule interpretations, but nothing too fatal.The only really bad mistake was when the French right wing cavalry missed out on going on react.In my opinion this lead directly to the collapse of that flank and the subsequent Austrian victory.

This picture captures the point when the French cavalry were observed by the Austrian commander to not be on react.It screamed opportunity.

This is the situation at the end when the French moral collapsed after their valiant counterattack had been defeated.